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The Only Person You're Competing Against is You · The Daily Writer

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Daily Rider Podcast, where we bring you tips and inspiration each day to help you build habits for riding success.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: For more resources, including your free Daily Rider Starter Kit, visit DailyRiderLife.com.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you ever run a race, you'll notice there are two kinds of runners, those who are competing against everybody else and those who are competing against themselves.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: The ones who are competing against everybody else take running really seriously.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: They like to set records and they like to get the glory of being known as a winner.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, there's nothing wrong with that at all.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: But the runners competing against themselves aren't worried about anybody else's time.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: They just want to run their own race and hopefully beat their previous record.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: At the very least, they want to finish the race, which is a phenomenal achievement in itself, since the vast majority of people never participated in the race in the first place.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this happened to me recently when I ran a 10K race.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't competing against anybody else.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: I went at my own pace, which happened to be pretty slow, but I still finished the race.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in fact, I'm not going to tell you what my time was.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was really bad, but I didn't care.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: I showed up for the race and I finished it, and that's what was important to me.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a lot of writers look at the creative journey as one where they're competing against everybody else.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: They worry too much about rankings, comparisons, and what everybody else thinks about them.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: But writing is about running your own race.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's about are you getting better over time?
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's about, are you consistently publishing your work?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's about, are you leaning more and more into your own unique voice?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the kinds of metrics that matter most as a writer.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: The novelist David Morrell, who wrote the bestseller First Blood, one of my favorite novels of all time, by the way, he said this.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: You have to follow your own voice.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be yourself when you write.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: In effect, you have to announce this is me, this is what I stand for, this is what you get when you read me.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing the best I can, by me or not, but this is who I am as a writer.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: I love those words from David Morrill.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the only person you are responsible to become is you, and the only race you need to run is the one you're running against yourself.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Here's today's question Do you get overly distracted by what other writers are doing and forget to run your own race?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Be honest.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, my friend, thanks for listening, and I'll see you in tomorrow's episode.